Launching Opus after photo download hangs Win8

I run Opus on a Win7-64 desktop plus Win8 ultrabook (Samsung) whilst travelling. I never have any issues on the desktop but, during 2 recent vacations & first-time use of the laptop, I have major problems with Opus after downloading pics from an SD card using the standard Windows downloader/re-namer utility.
Immediately after the download, when I launch Opus (default 2 listers - Documents & Pictures), the documents lister is populated but the pictures lister is blank & Opus is not responding (but not at this point showing this state in the header bar).
The program will not close or respond in any way & after launching the task manager & selecting close Opus, both Opus & the task manager (!!) are now frozen with "not responding" in the header bar. The only escape that I have been able to use at this point is a hardware reboot.
If I restart Opus after the boot, the same problem occurs immediately. Uninstalling & reinstalling does not help at this point but if I first run a Windows repair utility (Tweak 8), this finds that 85 files associations have been lost in the registry which I repair. If I follow this with a re-install of Opus, it now works again- until the next SD card pix download when the problem re-appears.
I have now, sadly, reverted to WinExp for all file management on the ultrabook.
Help please :frowning:

Did you lock into eventlog if there's any problem listed? Also I would advise not using tools like "Tweak 8" or "Tuneup" and so on... they are all crap (you won't find a sys without "broken" reg-entries and often enough a sys didn't work correctly or anymore after using such a tool).

For task manager to block while trying to End Task Opus implies a low-level problem in something like a hardware driver, filesystem driver, antivirus scanner, or Windows itself.

If the problem was in part of Opus's own code (application level) then task manager would be able to end the process immediately, but if the problem is in some low-level code (kernel level) then the process cannot be stopped until the call into the low-level code returns (which could be never if the low-level code is stuck in a loop).

The Crash, exit or high CPU usage when viewing certain directories guide has suggestions on how to track down which file/folder might be triggering the problem, which may help determine what is wrong.

I agree with Sasa as well: Most registry repair utilities are more likely to break (more) things than fix anything that mattered. (Not always true, but usually.)

OK - I expected to get a hard time after mentioning the "utility" program - I rarely use Tweak8 for any critical tasks but I now recall why I used it. After the 2nd time Opus crashed Windows, I rebooted then opened Win Explorer & notices that all the files were listed with vanilla icons - no Office, Adobe, Quicktime etc icons etc. This was scary as trying to open a Word doc asked what program to use etc. Running the registry cleaner utility in Tweak 8 fixed this problem immediately - if you have an easier, safer & more professional method for restoring file associations using OS-included utilities, I would like to hear about it.
As I am currently unable to launch Opus on the laptop, can you tell me where to find the eventlog?

I'm not sure the registry cleaner is really fixing the problem if it keeps happening again after you do more things.

It sounds like something deeper is wrong with the system, though I couldn't make a useful guess as to what.

(If you just updated to Windows 8.1, I've heard from several people who ran into driver issues with the update, which is strange considering it's a small OS update. Both Bluetooth and USB3.0 drivers, and probably others. But that is just a wild guess and doesn't explain the icons, only potentially the crash where Task Manager could not end the process.)